Lucía’s Reviews > 4 3 2 1 > Status Update

but the torment of being alive in a single body was that any given moment you had to be on one road only, even though you could have been on another, travelling toward an altogether different place.

that the forks and parallels of the roads taken and not taken were all being travelled by the same people at the same time, the visible people and the shadow people, and that the world as it was could never be more than a fraction of the world, for the real also consisted of what could have happened but didn’t, that one road was not better or worse than any other road

always did not mean always but most of the time, and at those rare times when the somber expectations of always were proved to be wrong, the only proper response was to thank the gods for their random act of benevolence and then return to the somber expectations of always, even if one’s first encounter with the principle of most of the time thundered in the bones with the force of a holy benediction.

No more bouts of morose introspection, no more journeys into the bogs of brooding self-torment, no more turning against himself, which was a weakness that had always made him less than he should have been.

It was’t just a new love but a new kind of love, a new way of being with someone that translated into a new way of being himself, a better way because of who and what and how she was with him, the way of being himself he had always aspired to but had never managed to accomplish in the past.

what a grand and beautiful world it was if you didn’t stop to look at it too closely.

old and weary souls could be bitter at times, and angry at times, most especially against the souls of the ones who did not feel that same bitterness and anger.

You’re your own man, and because of that you’re a thrilling person to be with, but also because of that you’re never going to fit in anywhere, which is a good thing, I believe, since you’ll be able to go on being your own man, and a man who is his own man is a better man than most men, even if he doesn’t fit in.

That was the one true advantage of having money over not having money, he decided—not that you could buy more things with it but that you no longer had to walk around with that infernal thought bubble hanging over your head.

Most people were scared, but scared was a stupid way to live, Ferguson felt, a dishonest and demoralizing way to live, a dead-end life, a dead life.